


My Heart And My Home

by notalone91



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Established Relationship, Everyone Is Alive, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Night Terrors, Richie Tozier is a Mess, Richie Tozier's Deadlights Vision, the suicides occur in richie's nightmare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-26 22:47:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30113190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalone91/pseuds/notalone91
Summary: Richie struggles with nightterrors after Derry take 2.heavily inspired by Little Big Town's Next To You.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 2
Kudos: 37





	My Heart And My Home

**Author's Note:**

> I chose not to use warnings because none of them are right. Everyone- including Stanley- is alive. But Richie will see Eddie die in the cavern in a nightmare and see every one of them kill themselves in a nightmare. It's a _little_ graphic but nothing too bad.

It’s dark. Darker than it had been just a moment before. The deadlights still whirred around above and the clown lay impaled on the splayed fingers of the crater in the center of the room. Eddie had done it. Even if It wasn’t dying, it was disarmed. And Eddie had done it. Because It had him.

Told you you were braver, he thought to himself as Eddie climbed on top of him. “Holy shit! Rich, wake up!” He yelled, shaking the stun off of him. “Yeah, there he is buddy! Richie! Listen, I think I got It, man.” Richie thought, somewhere, he could hear the others moving into the cavern. He still couldn’t piece it together. Still, Eddie rambled. “I think I killed It. I did!” The joy radiated off of him and Richie couldn’t help but bask in it for a moment. “I think I killed It for real.”

No sooner was the thought off his lips, Richie realized what was happening. Time seemed to slow. He reached for Eddie, to move him, to tell him- something, anything- but he couldn’t budge. He was frozen, still trapped inside his own head. 

Richie hadn’t seen the moment It got off. He hadn’t heard Bev and Ben screaming to them. He hadn’t heard Bill’s call. If he had-

The strike of It’s spidery claw might have missed him. Instead, the warm, slick blood sprayed all over him. Covered him. Coated his glasses like someone had added a red spotlight gel to them.    
He finally managed to get himself up, watching the movements desperately, but It still had Eddie. It flung him around the room like a rag doll. When Eddie finally came clean off the appendage, Richie was the first to get to him, sliding into the off-shoot from the main cavern like a batter stealing home. 

It wouldn’t have mattered.

Eddie’s body lay there, mangled and broken, no light left in him. Desperately, Richie tried to stop the bleeding, finding there was none. The blood had turned to black sludge, oozing from the gaping wound as it had done from Eddie’s mouth all those years before. He sobbed, clinging to him. “Eddie, look at me. Please, Eddie. Don’t,” he begged, leaning down across him. “I just got you back. You can’t-”

From across the hall, Eddie could hear Richie. He was having another nightmare. It was the 4th one this week and it was only- Eddie looked down at his watch to confirm- just barely Tuesday. He sat up straight and rubbed his eyes.

When they’d started dating 5 months earlier, on the anniversary of their win in Derry, they’d just sort of… transitioned. They’d already been living together since Eddie decided he was going to leave Myra. It slid together perfectly. 

But.

Nights like tonight, he wished he’d made a bigger deal about sharing a room. Yeah, the guest bedroom was more than officially his. Richie had told him as much when he was still in the hospital, even before either of them knew what would happen. It was a given, as much as the trundle under Eddie’s childhood bed had been Richie’s from the first night Richie had snuck into his room all those years ago. Still, Richie was his boyfriend- he still felt giddy even thinking it to himself. It made sense that, if they were living together, they should really be living together. 

Making a mental note to bring it up in the morning, he closed his eyes, leaning back against the headboard with no intent to go to sleep. He listened for a while, trying to discern what the dream was about, or if he was quieting on his own. Then, crisp through the night, he heard Richie cry out his name. 

That settled that. 

Before he could register what he was doing, he was across the hall and in Richie’s bed. Finding Richie twisted into his sheets, a thick sheen of sweat coating his skin, sobbing wasn’t new. It didn’t happen so much if he was in bed with him, so he figured it was okay. He’d never been given express consent, but also, Richie had never asked him either. It was just a given. 

He started out laying beside him, rubbing calming circles on his back. “I’m here, Rich,” he said, over and over again like a mantra. Whatever it was tonight, he wasn’t seeming to help. He moved to roll Richie onto his back and shook him a little. “Rich. Hey, you’re okay,” he said, when he started to stir.

Richie’s eyes bolted open wide. In the dark, without his classes, his ceiling fan chopping the light- “Not again. I can’t do it again. I can’t w-”

Realizing what he’d done, Eddie leaned across him to retrieve his glasses “I’m okay, honey. Here, look,” he said, putting the non-cracked, non-bloody glasses on Richie’s face and hurriedly yanking his shirt off over his head. “All healed,” he said, taking Richie’s left hand in his own and bringing it up to touch the puckered scarring across the graft on his chest. “Nothing but a memory, sweetheart. Just a bad dream.” He lowered himself to sit on Richie’s thighs, leaving his boyfriend’s hand to rest beneath his, over the heavy thrum of his still startled heart. “I’m right here with you. We’re safe.”

As he realized what had happened, and that Eddie, who had definitely not been in his bed when he fell asleep, had heard it, the tears falling from his eyes broke into loud sobs. Instead of clinging to Eddie like he usually did, he fell flat to his back and buried his head under his pillow. This was not going to work. 

“What happened, Rich?” he asked, still perched on his lap, ghosting his fingers up Richie’s ribs. “What was this one about?” 

Richie wrenched his torso from under Eddie’s hand and sat up a little. “Babe, I don’t wanna talk.” 

Eddie frowned at him still trying to help. He picked at the elastic on Richie’s pajamas before lowering himself to lay on top of Richie. It helped him. The calm, heavy weight of Richie’s arm around his shoulder or his legs across his lap. 

“Stop. Eddie, stop,” he said, trying to clear his head of the images his brain had supplied. Eddie on top of him wasn’t helping. Not when- “Just, gimme some space, okay?” he asked, tone unintentionally clipped.

Looking as though he’d been slapped, Eddie slowly backed off the bed and stared at him. “I was just trying to-” he said, raising his hands in surrender. “I thought-

“That wasn’t-” Richie groaned, sitting up. “I didn’t mean to say it like that. I just meant,” he dumped his hands onto the mattress beside himself. He sighed, searching for the best way to say it. “I’m sorry. I just meant that that was very much like what I was seeing and I needed you to move off of me because-”

“Try saying that next time,” he said, wrapping his arms around his chest. “I just wanted to help and I thought that maybe you’d want the same things that I do when I get like that. I don’t know how to help you if you won’t let me.” 

He could tell by the way Eddie’s fingers were tapping at his elbow that he was trying to temper an angry outburst. He was working so hard on it. He was doing so well. Richie reached his hand out for him. “Stay here tonight?” It was a question. Eddie could have left. Still, he moved toward the bed and laid down, a fair amount of space between them. “I sleep better with you here. I always have.” He rolled into Eddie’s side and let himself be held. Resting his cheek against Eddie’s chest, he closes his eyes. “I know I don’t say it enough,” he pressed himself to Eddie’s side, “I love you. I love you so much and I’m so happy you’re here.” He hooked his leg up over Eddie’s, earning him a little laugh from Eddie, who mouthed ‘space’ at him as he tickled across Richie’s shoulder and top of his arms. “I’ll be fine in the morning as long as you’re here.”

Eddie felt himself grow warm all over. “I love you, Richie. I’ve got you,” he said, pressing a kiss to his sleep matted hair. “Rest now.”

Much to his relief, Richie was better in the morning. They made breakfast together, quietly coexisting in their too-large kitchen. It echoed as Eddie washed up the dishes from their omelets. It was nice. They bickered as they moved easily around each other. Eddie dragged his fingertips across the small of Richie’s back. Richie pressed a kiss to Eddie’s cheek. “You know what would be easier?” Eddie paused, not nearly long enough for a response, then continued. “If I just slept with you every night.”

“Every night? Eds, we’re 40. You think you have the stamina-”

“That’s so not what I meant,” he said, eyes narrowing to slits as he leaned back on the counter arms folded across his chest with the scrub brush still in his hand. “I meant literal sleep, dickhead. But if you want to open that can of worms, yes, I could easily sleep with you every day for the rest of my life. I have the stamina and the leg strength. If you wanna give that a try, I’m up for it,” he said, swatting Richie in the ass with the brush as he moved next to him. “But, I want to be there in the hours after. I want to fall asleep with you. I want to be there when shit like last night happens, not all the way in my room just fucking waiting to see if you need me.”

Richie poked idly at the counter. “I always need you, babe,” he said.

“So, let me be there.” He reached up and cupped Richie’s jaw. “Don’t make me go back to my bed.”

Pressing their foreheads together, Richie sighed. “Of course,” he answered. “Of course.”

There are no nightmares that night. Or the next. Or even the next. Just good sex and lots of kissing and the safety of knowing that, if anything should happen, they’re right there, just a breath away from each other. They’ll handle it as it comes. 

Richie doesn’t understand. He’s standing in Stanley’s bathroom, watching his best friend bleed out in the tub. He rushes toward him but his hands fall free of Richie’s. There’s too much blood. It’s everywhere. He turns to grab a towel from the rack on the wall- anything to stop the bleeding, but, instead finds Beverly. Her short hair is blowing in the breeze. Her toes are curled over the edge of the roof of her building like they used to at the edge of the cliff at the quarry. He calls for her but she doesn’t hear him. She steps out and falls. He makes it to the fire escape, sweeping her mangled body into his arms. He turns to ask for help and finds Bill, standing over him. He’s behind his desk, reaching into the bottom right-hand drawer. He pulls out a pearl-handled revolver, clearly a replica from one of his movies, and shoves it into his mouth. He scrambles toward him but Bill has already pulled the trigger, spots of red and pink staining the books behind him. Richie squeezes his eyes shut. When he reopens them, he catches a glimpse of Ben behind the wheel of his car, going a hundred miles an hour over the edge of a bridge. He can’t watch the impact. He turns to see Mike walking out into the middle of an 8 lane highway. He screams for him, but the scream is drowned by the horn of a car and the impact of Mike’s frame against the windshield. He stumbles back over the guard rail, unseen and unharmed until he’s on the floor in Eddie’s bedroom in New York- the one he’d helped him clear out of any of his possessions all those months ago. He looks up to find Eddie, a sharp suit and a neatly tied noose around his neck, hanging from his closet. His head lolls to the side and his tongue, thick and purple and coated with flies, hangs out of his face. Richie scrambles back on all fours and backs right into his own bed. He rights his body and looks upon himself, bloated, covered in his own vomit, a bluish pallor staining his cheeks and lips. He doesn’t need to see it happen. He knows what happened. Even if he didn’t, the empty ziplock in his dead hand confirms it. He wants to be sick. He wants to scream. He digs his fists into his hair and doubles over.   
  
Eddie, startled awake by Richie’s thrashing, rolled over to check on him. “Richie?” He pressed a kiss to Richie’s bare shoulder. “It’s okay, honey. I’m here,” he said gently, wrapping him in his arms. He pressed his chest firmly against Richie’s back and whispered, “I got you, Rich. I got you.”

There was a moment where Eddie didn’t know if Richie was going to settle, but when he curled into himself and started to cry, he knew it was there. 

“I think I’m losing my mind,” he gasped between sobs. “I think the deadlights-” Richie pressed his face into his arms and groaned. “I think they’re still in me or the shit I saw is burned into my fucking brain.” Even without his glasses, when he rolled over to face Eddie, he could still see the sharp lines of his frown. The way his lips practically disappeared. “I can’t do it. If this is what Bev’s been dealing with for 27 years, I-”

“First of all, she didn’t know it was us. Not to cast aside her issues, but whatever you’re seeing is gonna be worse because you know it’s us.” He pushed back an errant curl off of Richie’s forehead, then kissed the spot where it had been. “Second, you can. You absolutely can do it. Do you want to talk about it?”

Richie shook his head and closed his eyes. Not only did he  _ so  _ not want to talk about it, he hated the thought of it. He just wanted it to go away.

With a sigh, Eddie tugged himself flush against his boyfriend. He leaned up and kissed him gently. If he registered the way Richie’s thumb trailed gently across his neck as he kissed deeper into his mouth, Eddie didn’t ask why. If Richie’s kiss had seemed a little more desperate, like he was clinging to a lifeline deep within Eddie, neither said. When they separated, Eddie stayed close. “I’m gonna be right here next to you forever, Rich.” Richie squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. “I love you,” Eddie added calmly, pointedly, “and I’m not going anywhere.” 

A surge of relief flushed through Richie. He kissed Eddie again, arm reaching around his back. They’d talk about it- he promised himself. They would. For the time being, though, Richie just let himself melt into Eddie’s touch. Even by the time the sun came up, he stayed blanketed in Eddie’s embrace, slow languid kisses punctuating the time. He watched as Eddie dozed peacefully beside him, focusing on the steady rise and fall of his chest.

“I can do this,” he thought, laying down next to Eddie. “I can do this with you here.”


End file.
